PayPal Web Payments Pro in Canada

Last fall PayPal (finally) launched Web Payments Pro for Canadian merchants. For years it has bothered me that Canadian merchants did not have access to this service and had to pass their customers to PayPal to complete the transactions. This is fine for small business and hobbiests, but doesn't cut it if you want to look like a professional.

We implemented our first WPP site in February of this year for www.gumdropsonline.com. They had used PayPal on their previous site and as part of a general redesign and software upgrade, they wanted an inexpensive way to have dual currencies.

They already had Canadian dollar store accounts through a major provider but had to apply for US dollar merchant accounts then pay monthly service charges on the US accounts. As a relatively low volume site, these monthly costs were going to represent a significant percentage of her expected US transactions in year 1.

After looking at the options we selected WPP because it was the lowest cost option. A monthly service fee of $35 per month compares favourably to other online payment gateways and 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction is also acceptable if slightly higher than the rated quoted by the bank. We are able to specidy currency on the transaction request allowing Gumdrops to process in both Canadian and US Dollars.

The only downside we can find with WPP is that the merchant must request transfers to their bank account. Gumdrops decided that would not be a big issue and was more than offset by the reduced fixed monthly costs with traditional merchant accounts. We have not done any indepth analysis to see where the cross over point will be where it will make more sense to use a traditional Moneris or Paymentech account, but we are pleased with the initial results